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Here I take the box of world
to watch its fevers grow,
its governance by owls,
those eyes that glow all night
like laundromats. I see
the way it carries me, its hooks,
the eulogy of snow. By common law
I'm stuck steep above my own life,
or below, the way these prepositions
don't mean anything if you're far
enough away. The owls
skirt the rags of light from town:
grave-shifters, insomniacs,
those too numb to sleep.
There's a bonfire in the snow
& girls & drinks & the light
that is itself a prayer
if prayer is an answer more
than a question for the sable-silvered clouds.
"Dark is the Night" by Willie Johnson
catechizes space in waves
as American madness raves
in echoic elementary schools.
Don't go, don't go, I hear them say.
November dangles like an ornament.
Dust rises off of us like crowns
of fathers that say our sons will kill us all,
they stopped talking long ago.
& I am claimed by distant touch,
by the rumor of firn from the first
snow still telling the old stories
of the world:
it's not a snowglobe, it's not
to be shaken. Someone's racket
of life is in there. That someone
is me, you owl, you king
of end credits & coal-mouthed glow

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